Read your skin like braille
by Julie Verne
Summary: Her skin is braille that tells a story.


Read your skin like braille

* * *

Kate sleeps in your bed with you sometimes. You don't talk to anyone about it, not even Gladys. Not even Kate. She just slips in when she thinks you're asleep, and leaves before dawn. Sometimes she nudges one of your limp arms over her, clutches the hand at the end to her chest.

You always thought you needed her more than she needed you. You're starting to think you might have been wrong.  
Those nights you breathe as quiet as you can.

And if she rolls over at some point to study your face in the dimly-lit room, curtain never quite closed against the gentle hum of the street light outside it, well. You pass it off at her being lonely, or indulging in a bit of hero-worship (you took the fall for her, after all)

You tell yourself a lot of things that aren't entirely true, these days.

* * *

And sometimes she'll come into the lounge after a bath after a show, wrinkling her nose at the smell of cordite that never seems to dissipate from your skin when she climbs on the couch beside you, sticks her head inside the newspaper you'd been reading and rests her head on your shoulder. When she tilts her head back to look at you, you read the newspaper as if your life depended on it. You use the same soap but she smells so _good. _You smell clean when you wash, but somehow she smells _good._ So you read the same section of the newspaper over and over as her wet hair damps your dressing-gown until she yawns and nuzzles her face into your chest and you have to tell her, very gently, that it's probably time for her to go to bed to distract her from the way the newspaper is shaking in your hands.

* * *

She still has nightmares, sometimes while she's still asleep in her room you'll hear her stifled terror, and that's when she'll commandeer your bed. You're glad when she does, because the sound of her in pain across the hall is too much for you. You want to rise, go to her but you know you can't; not without having to explain yourself and that's a conversation you're still not ready to have. It's a conversation you don't think you'll ever be ready to have.

Sometimes while she's in your bed she'll struggle or call out in her sleep, and that's when you run your hands over skin like braille, revealing her past by means of graffiti. It's a language you've learnt, over the years. If she wakes, she stares at you, blinking and wordless, somehow emptily. She'll let you bundle her into you, inside your dressing-gown (your house is too large to heat properly) and she doesn't say a word as you mumble soothing nothings into her hair. She'll clutch at your ribs, and you feel tears that aren't yours on your cheeks. She won't speak to you, those mornings, until you've made her a coffee. She knows that you know that she sneaks into your bed like a thief in the night, and it seems like she's not ready to have a conversation about that either. But once she's had her coffee, she'll smile, make breakfast, and send you off to the factory with a packed lunch and a wave at the front gate.

* * *

You find shirts you think you lost when she comes tripping quietly into your room. Shirts you haven't seen for months, thinking you must have lost them, or left them somewhere, or one of the girls took them while you were incarcerated. But Kate had them, all this time. Wearing them so close to her skin at night.

They fit different on her, tighter and looser both at once. You only notice on nights you left the lamp on to read in bed, or knit a little, trying not to think of the sanctuary that lies behind two solid doors.

That she's safe is enough for you. That she's across the hall is torture.

* * *

You never go to watch her sing, not anymore, but she never came to watch you box so you figure yourselves even.

It's been months after Kate started sneaking into your room when one night, as you're turning off the downstairs lights, she grabs you by the hand. You wait for her to say something, to explain herself, but she just looks at you nervously, and reminds you of the gangly fawn you met whose door wouldn't lock. Her fingers brush mutely against yours before she lets your hand go.

"Can I…" She drifts off, looks down, then grabs your hand again, firms her grip on it. "Can I stay with you tonight?"

You leave your hand passive in hers; you don't grasp or clutch at it. You just… let it be, the way you try to when any physical interaction is initiated by another woman; doubly so, if the woman is Kate.

"Might as well," you say a little gruffly. "Not like you won't end up there anyway." Kate's face spreads into a tentative grin, not sure if you mind or not. "Woulda kicked you out if you weren't welcome." And like that, the uncertainty fades from her face. "You know what I am, don't you?" You ask, mouth a little dry. You take a swig from your glass of milk; Marco would never let you live it down, that you drink milk at bedtime, but Kate pours you both a glass every night with expectant eyes and you can't disappoint her; not over something so stupid.

Her grip falters, then tightens. "You know what I am, don't you?" She retorts.

"Some days, I'm not so sure." You put your empty glass down and let Kate lead you up the stairs to your (slightly smaller) room. You climb into your bed and your heart _pounds_ as you watch her do the same on the other side. You should be used to this, but it's the first time either of you has acknowledged this and you're so nervous, so tightly wound that you lay there, stiff as a board as Kate arranges her limbs.

She arranges her limbs around you.

"I was singing tonight, about being alone, and I was feeling it too, when I remembered that all I had to do was step out of the club and into my home and… not be alone anymore."

When Kate finally kisses you, you expected her to taste of beer and wine, or surprise and fear. You didn't expect her to taste like… home.

* * *

Author's note: One of my friends died Wednesday and I can't stop thinking about her skin like braille beneath my fingertips.

A little less conversation; a little more action.

Now with bonus companion piece "Skin like heaven'.


End file.
